Mike Wood

Mike Wood

Conservative — Kingswinford and South Staffordshire

Speaking in the House of Commons on 14 March 2025

Debate

Free School Meals (Automatic Registration of Eligible Children) Bill

Contribution

I congratulate the hon. Member for Crawley (Peter Lamb) on promoting this Bill so ably. The last Conservative Government massively expanded eligibility for free school meals, meaning that the proportion of children and young people eligible is much higher than was the case under any previous Government. The evidence here proves that the inheritance we left behind in this area last July was much kinder than that which the last Labour Government left us in 2010, with one in three children able to get a free school meal—as opposed to one in six when the previous Labour Government was last in office—despite a large fall in the number of workless households.

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